This invention relates to a pattern segmenting system for a pattern recognizing device such as an optical character reader.
In order to recognize characters written on a sheet, it is necessary to photoelectrically convert the characters into binary information ("1" or "0") according to whether it is a part of the character or a part of the background and to successively segment the characters.
In a prior art device, the character is segmented either for each character frame with a predetermined width, or, when blank information is successively detected, during a period which spans several scanning lines. The former has the disadvantage that all characters in a character line are erroneously segmented if the top position of the character line is recognized incorrectly. The latter has a disadvantage in that a character which has a blank portion in the middle, such as a katakana " ", is segmented into two parts such as parts " " and " ". Furthermore, in the prior art device, it is impossible to segment or recognize the information in a character frame as a blank when a character is not present in the character frame.
In order to recognize a program in a coding sheet, it is necessary to recognize the blank. For example, in a Fortran program, a comment notation or $ mark is written in a first column, statement numbers are written in the second to fifth columns, a continuation mark is written in the sixth column and statements are written in the seventh and subsequent columns. Therefore, it is impossible to recognize the program if the position of the columns is not recognized. Furthermore, when a character pattern includes a noise, there is the possibility of erroneously segmenting the character pattern.